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skin ailments

If you’ve read my blog very much, you know that I love making soap. I love the cold process method the most and once I learned (thanks to my friend Becky) how to do basic soap, I’ve had a blast thinking about oil and herb combinations. It’s been fun to learn how wonderful nature is to provide us with ingredients to help our bodies heal!

A year or so ago, my son was having some skin issues that were kind of embarrassing to him and uncomfortable. On one of his fingers, he had a rash that just kept getting worse. It looked a lot like an eczema-type rash, and I learned that a lot of doctors recommend pine tar soap for eczema and psoriasis. Of course, I started looking for recipes for this pine tar soap! A lot of people use their favorite soap recipes and just add the pine tar in with the fats. Almost everything I read said that in order to be effective, pine tar should be 20 to 25% of the ingredients. There were a lot of posts reporting that people shy away from making pine tar because it’s kind of hard to make. (I didn’t read those posts until after I had already made my batch! Go me!)

Whenever my son’s finger flares up, he uses my Pine Tar Soap. It’s been helpful to him. He told me that after a couple of days, his finger usually is back to normal. Personally, I’ve used this soap when I’ve had allergic reactions. (You may remember that post some time ago when I reacted to the kitties I fostered?) My soap felt wonderful on those pesky rashes!!

There are a few things to keep in mind when making Pine Tar Soap:

in order to be helpful to the skin, pine tar should be 20-25% of the oils

do NOT use a stick blender

using essential oils for fragrance is kind of wasted…pine tar is a very strong and pretty overpowering scent

do NOT use a stick blender

even though the soap has a very strong scent, it’s not so bad when you use it…it kind of smells fresh and clean with a hint of pine

do NOT use a stick blender

it sets up really fast

do NOT use a stick blender

Here is my Pine Tar Soap Recipe. Remember: Do NOT use a stick blender! You will be sorry! If you don’t want to make your own, you can email me at beyondrelevance@gmail.com, or you can go to Life Thyme Botanicals and order from them. (They carry my soaps.)

For a 4 pound batch:

9.14 oz. coconut oil

27.4 oz. olive oil

9.14 oz. pine tar

10 oz. distilled water

5.1 oz lye

1 tbls castor oil

If you’ve never made homemade soap before, here are some great resources for you.

Soap Making Resource: He has GREAT tutorials that are very basic and easy to follow. You can also buy a lot of oils, botanical colorants and essential oils from him. He’s fairly new on the scene, but I like doing business with him. He has some GREAT molds!

Mountain Majestic Sage: This is one of the sites that I stumbled upon years ago. They have tons of resources, supplies at great prices and a lot of information. There is a lye calculator on this site that I use to make sure I have a good lye to fat ratio, because while I love chemistry, I really hate math and don’t want to have to figure the calculations out myself.

Miller Soap: Kathy Miller (no relation) devoted a lot of time to teaching people like me how to make homemade soap. She also has wonderful soaps for sale. She is so creative and her soaps are just plain beautiful! Lots of recipes and lots of advice.

Certainly let me know if you make the soap or if you use the soap. I’d love to know what you all think! Enjoy!!